Sakari Säynäjoki

Critical Naturalism aims to rectify an oversight in critical theory: neglecting the natural and emphasising the social, as if they were mutually independent spheres. This illusion of independence is usually dismissed as “self-evidently” erroneous. However, as we show, since independence from nature forms the everyday background of the fossil-fuelled imperial mode of living, the dual character of the illusion – factual falsity and experienced reality – should be taken seriously and analysed empirically and phenomenologically. Unprecedented independence from the limits of natural metabolic cycles is experientially real, enabled by specific features of fossil fuels. We present an analysis of these “fossil emancipations” with insights from energy system science and energy humanities. Thus, we propose an analysis of the illusion and outline how Critical Naturalism could utilise empirical science to better engage with the natural and the social, overcoming the illusion of independence and nafthist fallacies.

Discourse on hypocrisy is plentiful in the climate politics of the Global North. A specific form of climate hypocrisy critique, the fossil hypocrisy charge, contends that climate activists’ demands for system change and phaseout of fossil fuels are hypocritical because their everyday living is thoroughly based on fossil fuels. The individualistic fossil hypocrisy charge, wielded by climate obstructionists, has been refuted in research. However, a fundamental kernel of truth underlying the charge, and the broader obstructionist ‘narrative of necessity’ of fossil fuels, remains unresolved: Contemporary life is constitutively entangled with fossil fuels. While avoiding individual hypocrisy, we show how researchers and climate advocates might remain subject to an adjacent problem, fossil complacency, if they disregard the kernel in their agendas of system change. By drawing from interdisciplinary energy research, we show how critique of fossil complacency helps in reorienting climate hypocrisy and system change debates to overcome obstructionist ‘climate realism’.

"Tiedostaa järki ruusuksi nykyisyyden ristissä ja näin iloita tästä nykyisyydestä, tämä järjellinen näkemys on sovitus todellisuuden kanssa, sovinto, jonka filosofia suo niille, joihin on kerran iskeytynyt sisäinen vaatimus käsittää […]" -G. W. F. Hegel, Oikeusfilosofia Hengen ja luonnon totunnainen ja näennäisen ylittämätön vastakkainasettelu avaa laajan näkökulman G. W. F. Hegelin (1770–1831) filosofian kenties leimallisimpaan ja elinvoimaisimpaan ydinjuonteeseen: dualismien ylittämiseen ja yhteensovittamiseen. Hegelin ajattelua keskitytään usein tulkitsemaan juuri ”Hengen filosofiana” (philosophie des Geistes), vaikka dialektinen, vastakohtia ylittävä filosofia ei taivu helppoihin joko–tai-asetelmiin. Jatkuvuuksien ja suhteellisuuden hahmottamiselle on nykyhetkessä monenlaista tarvetta. Kokoelman kirjoitukset pohjautuvat Jyväskylässä 3.2.2023 järjestettyyn seminaariin sekä yhteen kutsukirjoitukseen. Kuten seminaari osoitti, Hegelin ajatteluun on edelleen laajaa kiinnostusta. Artikkelikokoelma kehittää eteenpäin esitettyjä keskustelunavauksia, problematisointeja ja käsitteellisiä selvennyksiä tutkimalla Hegelin yhä jatkuvaa filosofista ja yhteiskunnallista relevanssia. Kirjoittajakaarti koostuu sekä suomalaisen Hegel-tutkimuksen kentässä asemansa jo vakiinnuttaneista että nuoren polven uusista tutkijoista. Monipuolinen joukko todistaa osaltaan nykyisen hegeliläisen filosofian moninaisuudesta ja elinvoimaista.

Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Fossil Capitalism: Why should Anthropocene research talk about fossil capitalism? According to critics, the concept of the Anthropocene shifts the blame for environmental destruction onto universal “humanity” while obstructing its societal background. Instead of humanity, capitalism has been put forward as the prime culprit, and the debate often revolves around the concepts of the Anthropocene and Capitalocene. In this article, I argue that criticizing the Anthropocene concept from the perspective of the Capitalocene largely ignores a decisive factor behind the contemporary ecocatastrophe: fossil energy and its associated form of capitalism, fossil capitalism. I maintain that fossil capitalism should not merely be analysed as capitalism per se but also in direct relation to fossil fuels. In the article, I present a preliminary analysis of the special bond between fossil fuels and capitalism, which aims to justify the distinctive character of fossil capitalism. When this distinct character is left unperceived, research on the debate between the Anthropocene and Capitalocene is easily confined to either a sociopolitical or a technical perspective without combining the two. Hence, the debate should focus more closely on fossil capitalism.

According to the received view, Marxian (ideology) critique and Foucaultian (genealogical) critique constitute two divergent approaches of critical theory that have remarkably different goals and little in common. In this article, however, we identify a guiding thread that connects the Marxian and Foucaultian traditions and motivates a distinctive approach within critical theory we call the ‘critique of constitution’. The problem of restricted consciousness, we show, is the core problem in common between Michel Foucault's critical history of thought and Georg Lukács's theory of reification which underlies the tradition of Western Marxism and Frankfurt School critical theory. The problem concerns the limits of intelligibility and, by the same token, the apparent inevitability of the given social ontology. Our sense of what is possible depends on what we are able to think. But we know from the history of sciences that the limits of intelligibility change, thereby also altering our sense of what is possible. This becomes a political problem in connection with the intelligibility of social reality, because our restricted consciousness limits the alternatives we can so much as consider and seek to bring about. The critique of constitution, then, aims to expand the scope of possibility by revealing the contingent formation of the given limits of intelligibility. We argue that this is the paramount political task for Foucault and Lukács alike, other important differences notwithstanding.